Finnish Party

The Finnish Party was a conservative political party in Finland that was active from 1861 to 1918. The party formed around a core of Finnish nationalist intellectuals during the 1860s, but it remained formally unrecognized for decades. In the 1877-1878 sessions of the Diet of Finland, the party attained a leading role among the clergy and peasantry, which it would hold until 1904. In 1894, the Young Finnish Party was formed by former Finnish Party members who were critical of the Russian Empire; the Finnish Party sought to cooperate with the Russian government in order to maintain its legitimacy and in order to enact its proposed language laws. Aside from the central language question, the party espoused conservative values and supported many social reforms. In addition, the party held centrist views, placing it between the Social Democratic Party of Finland to the left and the Young Finnish Party to the right. From 1907 to 1917, it was the second-largest party in the country (behind the SDP) and the largest non-socialist party. After the Russian Revolution and the subsequent independence of Finland in 1917, the Finnish Party advocated creating a pro-German monarchy to fight off the Bolsheviks of Russia during the Finnish Civil War. However, the defeat of the German Empire in World War I led to this plan failing, and the Finnish Party broke up into the monarchist National Coalition Party and the liberal National Progressive Party of Finland.